SandBank

The glass industry selects only white, pure sand for the manufacturing of glass. This type of sand can only be found in a small number of sand quarries around the world. As part of the ZandBank project, Atelier NL experimented with local and impure types of sand. Types of sand from different locations produce different colours, patterns, and textures. When melted in the oven, the sands fracture, foam, and harden into crystallization patterns. Atelier NL explored the potential of these new material variations as well as the geological stories they tell and were able to refine increasingly effective methods of transforming wild sand into viable, everyday glass objects resulting in the ZandGlas series — a set of glassware made by fusing locally sourced sand collected from different regions in the Netherlands and Europe.